The company hopes to hammer out an agreement with other national
Internet providers which would guarantee that “while being
transported from the sender to the receiver in Germany… no single
byte leaves Germany,” Thomas Kremer, a board member of Telekom’s
data privacy, legal affairs and compliance, told the magazine.

To put the plan into effect, Deutsche Telekom must secure the
support of all its competitors, including Telefonica and
Vodafone.

While Vodafone and Telefonica are currently mulling the
initiative, another competitor – Internet service provider QSC –
has questioned the efficacy of the plan, saying it was not
possible to determine with certainty whether data is being routed
nationally or internationally.

"In a next step, this initiative could be expanded to the
Schengen area," the spokesman said, referring to the group of
26 European countries – excluding Britain – that have removed
border controls for participating countries.

Deutsche Telekom first began leading the charge for to protect
its users’ privacy from foreign intelligence agencies in August
when they rolled out 'Email Made in Germany', an encrypted
email service that only uses German servers to process and store
all domestic email traffic.

The move followed revelations that the US National Security
Agency (NSA) collects 500 million pieces of phone and email
metadata from Germany each month — more than in any other EU
country.

“Germans are deeply unsettled by the latest reports on the
potential interception of communication data," said Rene
Obermann, head of Deutsche Telekom.

“Now, they can bank on the fact that their personal data
online is as secure as it possibly can be.”

Experts do not believe the move will stop governments from
getting their hands on information, although it might complicate
efforts to do so.

"Of course the NSA could still break in if they wanted to, but
the mass encryption of emails would make it harder and more
expensive for them to do so," Sandro Gaycken, a professor of
cyber security at Berlin's Free University, said when the idea
was first proposed.